


Acting Sheriff

by celli



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 06:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina managed to give Emma a withering glare. "Of course it's you," she said hoarsely. "Out of this whole town, they had to go running to you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acting Sheriff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havocthecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/gifts).



> Thanks to thestarsexist for the beta!
> 
> Written prior to "The Dark One Rises."

Emma perched uncomfortably on the tree branch, engaged in a perfectly mature and professional staring contest with the orange tabby cat just out of her reach.

"And I suppose you're Puss in Boots?" she asked him.

He meowed.

"Uh-huh," she said. "Listen, you might as well come this way, because if I break my neck trying to save you, I'm gonna be really pissed."

The cat blinked at her a couple of times, then casually wandered her way, its body swaying on the narrow limb.

Emma picked him up one-handed, hissing a bit as its claws dug into her shoulder, then made her way carefully down to the ground. She detached the cat from her jacket, lifted it, and looked it in the eye.

"We will never speak of this again, you understand?"

The cat unexpectedly butted its head against her cheek. She laughed and set him down; he disappeared into the forest.

"Another day in the life of an Acting Sheriff," she muttered, and had hardly started brushing herself off when she heard yelling coming from her parked car.

"Emma! Emma!"

"Henry?" she called, hurrying toward the road.

He came barrelling towards her and threw himself into her arms. Emma could feel his body shaking against hers.

Mary Margaret hurried after him. Emma could just see her car parked behind Emma's.

Emma tried to take Henry's shoulders so she could check him for injuries, but he clung to her. "Are you okay? Is he okay?" she asked Mary Margaret, hearing the panic in her voice.

Mary Margaret was even paler than usual. "It's Regina," she said.

***

"The garage wall _collapsed_ on her?" Emma asked as her little Bug and its occupants pulled up to the front of the Mills house.

"The whole garage is sort of--" Henry tilted his hand. "But the wall closest to her just fell."

Emma was going to make many, many Wizard of Oz jokes after this was all over. "Okay. Henry, run into the house and call--anyone. Everyone. Then stay out of the way, I mean it. Mary Margaret, you're with me."

Even fighting for breath under a stack of cinder blocks, Regina managed to give Emma a withering glare. "Of course it's you," she said hoarsely. "Out of this whole town, they had to go running to you."

"Insult me later when you have the lungs for it." Emma turned to Mary Margaret. "Do you have a handkerchief?"

"I--yes." She pulled it out of her purse.

"I knew I could count on you," Emma said. She leaned down and spread it over Regina's nose and mouth. Regina's eyes widened. "It's not going to protect you from the dust very much, but it's all we've got."

Regina was still staring at her like Emma might do--something. Or nothing. Emma had a brief vision of herself just walking away and letting fate deal with the Evil Queen Mayor. "I should be tempted," she muttered.

"What?" Mary Margaret asked.

"Let's get started," Emma said in a normal tone. She grabbed a cinder block and felt it scrape along her palms as she lifted it off Regina and tossed it to the side. Mary Margaret did the same. Emma could hear the grunt as she lifted it, and waited a second to make sure it didn't get dropped right back down, but Mary Margaret nodded at her grimly and dropped it a few inches away.

"I can help," Henry said behind them.

"No," Emma, Mary Margaret, and Regina said in unison.

"Go around front and tell people where to find us," Mary Margaret said with a little more kindness than Emma could manufacture right now.

"Okay," he said in a small voice, and Emma tried not to think about his face as she turned for the next block.

It seemed like Regina was buried under a skyscraper's worth of concrete. Emma's hands were bleeding and her arms screaming with pain. When the first of the other Storybrooke residents showed up, she and Mary Margaret were stripped to their camis, filthy and sweating. They got more than one startled look, and more than one person tried to nudge them to the side and take over, but the two of them stayed stubbornly at their tasks--although Mary Margaret did let people take the blocks from her, since she'd run out of space nearby to drop them. Regina had closed her eyes at some point, but every time Emma checked, she was still breathing.

Finally, Mary Margaret pulled the last block out of the way, and she and Emma fell aside to let the paramedics at Regina. Emily Foster, who was tiny and blonde and ridiculously strong (Henry was sure she was Tinkerbell for some obscure reason), guided Regina onto a stretcher and slipped an oxygen mask onto her face.

As the stretcher went by, Regina put up a hand to stop Emily. She gestured at Emma.

"Seriously?" Emma asked.

Regina gestured again. She pushed the oxygen mask away from her face.

Emma dragged herself to her feet (oh, God, her _arms_ ) and approached the stretcher. "Let me guess," she said. "This doesn't change anything between us, blah blah blah."

Regina stared at her a second. "Well, it doesn't," she said finally.

Emma smirked. "I'm sure you'll think of a much better comeback by the next time I see you."

Emily pushed the mask back on Regina's face. "You really shouldn't talk," she said. "You might damage something permanently."

Emma, with an inner strength she hadn't realized she possessed, did not roll her eyes.

She let herself fall back on the ground as the whole circus moved away. Mary Margaret was still there. Her bruised and bloody hands rested carefully on her stomach.

"We should get those patched up," Emma said, motioning with her own beat-up hands.

"Would we have to move?" Mary Margaret asked.

Emma laughed. "Eventually?"

"I'm good here for a while," Mary Margaret said.

Emma could see Henry looking back at them as someone led him away towards the ambulance. He gave her a little wave; she smiled back at him and put her head down. "Me too."


End file.
